Blood-sucking bedbugs 'feast on us all the time', say Burnaby apartment tenants

Amber Robinson’s family is being bitten by bedbugs in a Burnaby apartment building that has a chronic infestation. Residents of the Albert Street building have filed a complaint with the Residential Tenancy Branch, and a hearing is scheduled for April.

Photograph by: Larry Wright
, Burnaby Now

Residents of a Burnaby apartment building have taken their property manager to the Residential Tenancy Branch in an attempt to deal with a chronic bedbug infestation.

The rental building at 4105 Albert St. has been infested for years with the blood-sucking parasites, and the NOW spoke with several upset tenants who want action.

Amber Robinson has been living in the building since 2011 and is raising four kids on a fixed income. Roughly a year ago, she saw small insects in her suite and noticed bites.

“(I) saw them crawling around everywhere, (I was) waking up in the middle of the night and they would be all over me and my toddler, my baby was seven months old,” Robinson said. “They just enjoy us, they feast on us all the time. It’s tiring, it’s tormenting, it’s very traumatic.”

Throughout one of her pregnancies, Robinson had to sleep on the floor in her living room because of the bedbugs.

“It just became mental for me. I had to throw out all my furniture, all my beds,” she said. “It’s been treated once, and that was traumatic on its own, because I was a single mother, I was pregnant, I had nowhere to stay overnight, and you can’t stay in a chemical sprayed (suite).”

According to Robinson, the insects move throughout the building when pest control treats suites.

“They are just travelling through the walls, and the manger will finally spray someone’s apartment, and they just move into the next apartment,” she said. “They sprayed downstairs. For the past four or five, days, they’ve been constantly biting us. These are babies now, they go through your socks and they just bite you.”

Robinson said all four of her children are being bitten.

“I’m in a state of panic all the time, and I’m embarrassed at the same time. I need to get out of here, but no one will take a family of six in,” she said. “(The building manager) won’t even pay for a hotel so this place can get sprayed.”

During a recent phone conversation, Robinson was in tears, facing the prospect of having to throw out all her furniture yet again.

Another tenant, Gerry Cole, has been living in the building for four or five years and said bedbugs have been in the place as long as he has, although he insists his suite is clear of insects.

“I’ve seen people leaving in the middle of the night,” Cole said, adding he’s spent hundreds on pest control. “I’ve seen tenants moving in and out of the building. There are people that live in the building that have mental illnesses, and they are not dealing with the bedbug problem properly.”

Cole said the building manager, Nader Pourbazyar, is spending quite a bit of money on pest control, but he’s not doing it properly.

The NOW spoke to Pourbazyar and was told he has spent $9,000 on pest control over the past 2.5 years. However, Pourbazyar said the tenants were exaggerating the problem and some would not cooperate to let anyone in to spray their suite.

According to Pourbazyar, 12 of the building’s 20 suites have bedbugs. Pourbazyar said he manages several buildings and has dealt with bedbugs before, but this building has uncooperative tenants.

Cole filed a complaint with the Residential Tenancy Branch to try to force Pourbazyar to deal with the problem, and there was a dispute resolution hearing set for March 21, but it was postponed until April.

Pourbazyar plans to ask the branch if he can evict the tenants who are not cooperating with the pest control measures.

Bedbugs are not considered a health hazard because they don’t spread diseases, so Fraser Health will not get involved. (The building also has cockroaches, however, which are considered a health hazard.)

According to the Tenancy Resource and Advisory Centre, a bedbug infestation may not be reason enough to break a tenancy agreement, although it is largely the landlord’s responsibility to handle pest control. People who find bedbugs in their suites should notify their landlords immediately, and failure to comply with pest control instructions could result in eviction. While many cities have a standards-of-maintenance bylaw, which means the municipality can force landlords to keep their property in good shape, Burnaby does not.

Amber Robinson’s family is being bitten by bedbugs in a Burnaby apartment building that has a chronic infestation. Residents of the Albert Street building have filed a complaint with the Residential Tenancy Branch, and a hearing is scheduled for April.

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